Supreme Court accepts BES banker’s appeal

Portugal’s Supreme Court of Justice has accepted an appeal filed by the lawyers of former Banco Espírito Santo chairman Ricardo Salgado to reduce his prison sentence from eight years to six for abuse of trust.

A dispatch from the Supreme Court of Justice recognises the legitimacy of the arguments put forward by the lawyers of the former Espírito Santo Group (GES) boss. A decision from the Appeal Court of Lisbon in May increased the banker’s sentence form six years to eight years. Originally a six years sentence had been handed down by a criminal court in March, 2022.
In the last appeal made in September, the defence called for a repeal of the decision by the Court of Appeal to reject the carrying out of a medical exam and subsequent report ordered as part of the EDP case that is currently being tried, and the non-suspension of a single prison sentence because of a psychiatric anomaly resulting from an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
“Putting the defendant with Alzheimer’s disease in prison is the same as handing down a death sentence (…) This is only being seen in the current case because the name of the defendant is Ricardo Salgado”, say the defence lawyers who are also denouncing “a terrifying justice that is riding roughshod over human dignity and health, which does not mind handing down a camouflaged death sentence.”
The former banker had stood accused of 21 crimes in the Operation Marques case, but during the pre-trial phase the judge Ivo Rosa thew out almost all of the accusations on April 9, 2021.
However, Ricardo Salgado was indicted to stand trial for three crimes of abuse of trust over transfers of more than €10 million.

Image: Rui Ochoa/Presidência da República